NATO TROOPS RAID SERB HARD-LINERS IN A BOSNIAN CITY

Published: August 21, 1997

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American officials say they are ready to hand Mrs. Plavsic some $9 million in aid for the area around Banja Luka that she now controls. By backing her in the current power struggle, international officials hope to push Dr. Karadzic to the margins and carry out the Dayton accords. They have hinted that he may soon be captured and turned over for trial in the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

But Mrs. Plavsic is an odd ally of the West. She was a zealous supporter of the war and the effort to annihilate the Muslims in Sarajevo, Bosnia's capital, arguing that they belonged to an inferior civilization that should be eradicated.

She is a deeply religious woman who has strong backing from the Serbian Orthodox Church, one of the institutions that championed the Serbian campaign that left more than 200,000 dead and more than a million Muslims homeless. When she was appointed to run for President by Dr. Karadzic, she was described by a senior United States official as a ''stooge.''

She says that she only wants to ''protect the Serb republic'' and that a wealthy clique of warlords in Pale is destroying the enclave by taking money that should be used to pay teachers, hospital employees and government officials.

She does not speak to her Bosnian Serb followers about letting Muslim and Croat refugees return or carrying out other controversial aspects of the Dayton agreement.

Mrs. Plavsic called earlier this month for elections in an attempt to replace the Karadzic-controlled Bosnian Serb assembly, which refused to endorse her call to dismiss the hard-line Interior Minister, Dragan Kijac, a close ally of Dr. Karadzic.

The assembly ignored her demand, and on Friday the Bosnian Serb Constitutional Court ruled against her call for new elections.

The decision to take over the police stations started out Sunday as an effort to curb the excesses of Mrs. Plavsic and her supporters.

On Sunday a well-equipped special police unit loyal to Mrs. Plavsic occupied the main Banja Luka police headquarers, saying there was evidence that the police were tapping the President's phones and had intimidated the members of the Constitutional Court. This was later confirmed by NATO officials who said they had found hundreds of audio and video surveillance tapes.

NATO forces moved in on Sunday afternoon, stripped the police unit of its weapons and expelled it from the building.

International officials said more than 100 pro-Karadzic police officers quickly arrived in Banja Luka and seized control of the main police station, which tonight was in the hands of NATO troops and a few police officers loyal to Mrs. Plavsic.